What is a Blog?

A blog started out as the online version of a personal journal or diary, a regularly written record of events or thoughts in a chronological order. Many of these bloggers found that others were interested in what they had to say, started following them and interacting by leaving comments.

 

Have you ever poured out your thoughts & feelings
in a personal journal or diary?  

 

 

Today blogs can also include videos, audios, pictures and links to other parts of the internet. So it evolved to a way for anyone to share with the world their thoughts and passions on any or all subjects you can think of in a conversational manner.

 

Hence businesses quickly adopted this as a beneficial means to promote themselves and interact with their customers. To share their news, make announcements, ask their customers for feedback, their likes and dislikes…

 

A blog is a website or part of a website. It’s dynamic in that it can have or create a lot of activity through the posting of regular posts & comments which search engines like.

 

The WordPress platform is a favourite amongst bloggers.

 

 

Understanding the terminology:

 

Blog: the online version of a journal or diary. It derives from its full name Weblog and both words are used interchangeably in the online world. The word blog is also a verb & used to express to write or edit a blog post.

 

Blogger: the author of the blog posts (journal entries)

 

Blogging: the action of writing the posts for a blog

 

Blogroll: a listing of all posts with a hyperlink to their respective full post

 

Post: the journal entries of a blog

 

Publish: to make the post live on website for readers to see

 

Comment: a readers’ shared thoughts, ideas or questions in relation to the blog post or website

 

Thread: the comment dialog

 

Category: Name given to a topic, enabling the grouping of blog posts that relate to that topic

 

Tags: Words used to describe some aspect of the content of a blog post (broader grouping)

 

Archive: the listing of old posts normally in date order

 

Julie is a blogger and blogs in her ‘Fun Times’ blog. She already has 65 posts in the archive.  She was blogging about ‘Treasure Trails’ when a comment from Joe appeared in her ‘how to host a murder mystery evening’ post. She replied to Joe’s comment & went back to blogging her new blog.  She categorised it as ‘Days Out’ & tagged it as ‘activity’ & ‘review’. Julie published it and checked that her new post was listed on her blogroll. In the meantime Mike & Tina also commented in the same thread as Joe.

 

 

What does a blog look like?

Well they vary.  You’re looking at a blog post right now.  Their look & feel will be driven by the blog owners’ preferences from choosing the website theme & use of the theme options; choice of fonts & colours; use of imagery, sidebars & widgets; social media buttons; their topic & writing style; …

 

Have you read any blogs? Do you have any favourite ones?

It’s like walking in a candy store, so many varieties.

 

 

They do however all have certain common characteristics:

Can you identify them on this website?

 

• A way to find a post, eg: listed on the home page or other page in the form of a blogroll; listed in a widget positioned in the sidebar; listed in a menu at the top of the website; via a categories, tags or archive section;

 

• Access to other posts from that post, eg: navigation to previous or next post; an internal link;

 

• Post excerpts with read more facility  

 

• Post heading with eg: date; author; categories &/or tags it’s been posted in;

 

• Content, eg: written text; imagery; videos; audios; links;

 

• Classification, eg: categories; tags; post date;

 

• Comment section

 

 

Blogging has proven to be extremely valuable …

… to a diverse range of people and businesses for a variety of reasons. For example: to share their knowledge; to share their passions; to raise their own or their causes profile; to easily reach a global audience; to create an additional income or fully fledged business; and so on …

 

Thanks to bloggers, readers have never been more spoilt with the choice available in finding relevant information from different perspectives. Their interests, questions and concerns are covered.

 

 

Are there too many blogs out there?

Not at all. We are all unique in the way we perceive things and communicate them. Readers don’t relate to just any style, they’ll follow blogs that resonate with them. Your voice and style might just be what they have been looking for.

Fancy having your own blog & sharing your passion with the world?

 

It really isn’t complicated. Have a read of Getting Started if you’re wanting to do it as a business. Where I share with you a great resource to set one up with step by step guidance & so much more.

 

 

Have any questions? Feel free to ask them below and chime in any discussion.

To your abundance & dream laptop lifestyle!  🙂